Linguist Brianne Hughes has compiled more than 1200 cutthroat compounds, including smell-feast meaning a freeloader, and smellfungus, a chronic complainer. For a lively primer about such compounds, check out her video. This is part of a complete...
The term dog pound sounds a lot more menacing than animal shelter, until you learn that pound simply has to do with the idea of an enclosed space, as does a pond, which is often formed by enclosing a space and filling it with water. This is part of...
Tor from Vermont asks about makes no never mind to me, a phrase he heard after moving as a teenager from New Jersey to the Northeast Kingdom. It means roughly “I don’t care” or “it makes no difference to me,” with nevermind behaving like a noun. The...
Phthalate, a compound in chemistry, got us thinking about other words with ph and th right next to each other. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Words with Ph-Th” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Susan from...
Evidence-based keeps its hyphen. Dan from Rochester, Minnesota, who writes research protocols, has been right to restore it when the phrase works as a compound adjective before a noun. It’s also a good hyphen to keep after the verb, as in the...
Martha and Grant share some of their latest guilty-pleasure reading from Twitter feeds that show just how much meaning can be compressed into 140 characters. Cases in point: @veryshortstory and @GRAMMARHULK. This is part of a complete episode...